Besides the obvious (MIT, CMU, UC Berkely, and Stanford), where would it be easiest to get recruited by higher paying tech companies (not necessarily Google), just anywhere with prestige and money associated with it?
California Institute of Technology
California Polytechnic State University — San Luis Obispo
Cornell University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Purdue University-West Lafayette
San Jose State University
Santa Clara University
Texas A&M University-College Station
University of California-Davis
University of California-Los Angeles
University of California-San Diego
University of California-Santa Barbara
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Southern California
University of Texas-Austin
University of Washington
@Alexandre You wouldn’t consider University of Wisconsin Madison over colleges like U Washington or the less selective UCs?
Wisconsin-Madison belongs on that list too…as does Maryland-College Park, Penn State-University Park, Brown, UPenn and several other great universities. There are too many to mention.
I see. Do you happen to have any sort of ranking i.e. Caltech > UIUC or something?
What about Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and RPI. Their placements are very good.
Three aspects that can make a college attractive to recruit at:
- Location conveniently near the employer.
- Large number of CS majors.
- Whether the employer sees the college as bring good in CS.
Big companies may recruit more widely, but small companies may have fewer needs and recruiting resources.
Companies in some industries like finance may also emphasize overall college prestige more.
Here are some resources for you:
https://www.paysa.com/blog/2017/06/05/top-colleges-in-tech/
https://www.scribd.com/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/27/tech-jobs-silicon-valley.html
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/best-worst-metro-areas-for-stem-professionals/9200/
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/job-recruiters-work-to-woo-uw-computer-science-students/
For your specific question, I would pay particular attention to the already posted first two links, slides 12-13 on the second one:
https://www.paysa.com/blog/2017/06/05/top-colleges-in-tech/
https://www.scribd.com/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
The graduate computer science rankings are now both out of date and not really reflective of your question. The whole thing is based on academic opinions of I believe 2014.
If you go to one of those good CS schools, you can get an internship/job in CS in any of the cities, so I wouldn’t worry there.
How is Harvey Mudd not mentioned yet? 
It is very well respected at west coast tech companies.
+1 to above, it gets left off often because of its size which is why it’s missing from most studies which don’t adjust for said size. Great addition.
In terms of getting a job in the industry, you’re asking the wrong questions here if you’re looking for an ordered ranking. Being at one of the many schools mentioned here is a check box to satisfy, not really a clear X > Y > Z. I would focus more on the other factors at each of these schools. Caltech and UIUC are very different environments. You probably prefer one over the other, and that difference will probably be more valuable than any difference between them in terms of CS job prospects.
Here is a report for Silicon Valley hiring…
https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
Many of the top programs release fairly detailed career placement reports. You can get a lot of information from those. Here are reports from MIT, Penn, Cornell and Berkeley. Other schools have similar reports too.
https://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/about/files/2016-gss-survey.pdf
http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/2016_Senior_Survey.pdf
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/upload/2016-CS-UG-Combined.pdf
https://eecs.berkeley.edu/about/by-the-numbers#ugrad-programs
According to its annual infographics on the fate of recent grads, Rice sends a lots folks (presumably CS majors and engineers) to work for tech firms. For the graduating classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016, Google and Microsoft both numbered among the top 10 or so employers. Another was Epic Systems (healthcare software)–not sexy, but big.
Instead of worrying about prestige, try to figure out what kind of work you want to do in CS and find a company that does that. You’ll be miserable at a “prestigious” company if you’re stuck with work you don’t like.
I live in the Bay Area, and companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple aren’t as prestigious locally as students and people outside of California imagine them to be. They’re becoming passé.